


Tarantula

by SignorinaAnarchia



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1920s, Angst, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Feelings, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Giant Spiders, Hogwarts, Regrets, Romance, Young Leta, beasts - Freeform, f/m - Freeform, poor Newt, young Newt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-19 23:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18980947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SignorinaAnarchia/pseuds/SignorinaAnarchia
Summary: He thinks that Leta’s like an Acromantula.The others run away from her because she frightens them, because she’s ready to bite them at the slightest touch, at the slightest word.But if you take care of her, caress her, and feed her, and talk to her, and show her that to you she’s not a monster at all, that she can trust you, because you hatched her egg and you would do it a hundred more times, then she will recognize you in a crowd, even if you belong to a different species from her, she will wrap you in her canvas and protect you from everything, even from her fellows.Even from herself.Some would say that Newt has a twisted way of expressing love, and that he’s attracted to the wrong things.Maybe.





	Tarantula

  

 

_I'm living but I'm feeling numb _

_  
Can see it in my stare _

_  
I wear a mask so falsely numb _

_  
And I don't know who I am_

 

_[...]_

__

_And when the thunder breaks _

_ _

_ It breaks for you and me _

_ Tarantula _

 

_   “ _ _Tarantula”,_   ** Beck **

 

 

 The Black Lake is perhaps the only thing she’s going to miss about Hogwarts. On its shore, she spent more afternoons than she likes to admit.

Alone, since Newt left.

"I can't believe it's been seven years already," Bunty whispered as they lined up to receive N.E.W.T.’s results. 

Leta stifled the urge to answer her  _ I can't believe they haven't passed yet. _

For seven years she has been seeing teenagers laughing, having fun, making friends. She has never been so carefree.

It seemed that the big clock in the courtyard was ticking backwards to her. One day she even sneaked into the tower where it was set on, intending to check that someone had not tampered with gears to make her another pathetic joke.

It was there that she saw Newt for the first time, surrounded by nests, jars full of water and tiny cages.

The last two years have been hell without him. When you get used to having friends, it’s harder to get used to being alone again. 

Newt would say "if you prevent a hippogriff born in captivity from flying, he will always suffer less than a caught one". 

But Newt is not there.

 

 * 

 

Leta doesn't care where she’s going to end up working. She envies Newt, who has clearer ideas than her, and says he  absolutely  doesn’t want to work in office.One day, just for the sake of provoking, she tells him that after school she’s going to apply for an internship at the Ministry.

Newt doesn’t frown, - probably he’s not even able to - he simply looks at her sideways, with his crooked smile. He understood that Leta’s lying.

Sometimes his perspicacity makes her feel naked. Sometimes it makes her scared.

A life of secrets, a life of "I don't want to talk about it", a life to build an impenetrable canvas of lies... 

And then, without having looked for it, without having wanted it, she found Newt. Newt, who understands everything.

Even what you wouldn't tell him.

 

* 

 

Newt doesn’t believe he ever had secrets he can’t tell anyone. His interactions with humans are rather sparse, and he spends all his free time dealing with beasts.Something, however, is telling him that Leta has a lot of secrets. He sees her suffering, and he doesn't know how to help her. 

It’s during those moments that Newt experiences the closest sensation to discomfort he has ever felt. He self-convinces that it’s normal, because Leta is the closest thing to a human friend he has. For some time, he wondered if she considers him as such too, until he decided he doesn't care. 

It’s enough to him sitting on the shore of the Black Lake with her, listening to her badmouthing Gryffindors, telling her everything he found out about Bowtruckles’s social life.

He couldn’t ask for better.

 

* 

 

He always listens to her, even on days like these, when Leta’s particularly down to earth.

"Sometimes I wonder what I‘m living for," she whispers "I mean, I have no family, no friends... where am I going to end up when all of this’s over? I’m just ... going on".

Newt thinks about it. He cannot understand what it's like not to have a family, but he knows well how it feels being alone.

"I think you have to find something worth living for. I mean, nothing special, just something that allows you to get out of bed in the morning and live your life without feeling... like this." 

Leta doesn’t speak, and it occurs to Newt that he may have said something stupid.The urge to remedy causes him to get words out of his mouth without even having the time to think about it.

"Even someone. I’m trying to say, I do know that it’s so much more difficult to find people than...goals in life. I mean... to really find them, to establish a bond to become your...source of strength, I think. But at the same time, I do believe that no pastime could never compete with...".Newt gets stuck and doesn't finish the speech.

He doesn't even know why he started babbling this stuff. Leta’s not a sentimental, nor is he. 

The truth’s that sometimes Newt feels the urgent need to tell her something deep, something that has been lying hidden inside him for year. But he can't define it, not even in his head, nor find the words to express it. And then he remains quiet. 

Fortunately, most of the time, Leta understands. And this time she intervenes to save him from embarrassment as well.

"I think you're right, Scamander. Maybe I'll find someone."

She would have something else to say too, for example that only recently she managed to look at her reflection in the mirror without feeling disgusted, and that she doubts to deserve a better attribute than "unpleasant".

However, she doesn’t want to break Newt's trustful expression, odd Newt that knows beasts so well, and still manages to trust people.

 

*

 

In all honesty, Newt would never have thought that  _someone_   would have been his brother. Not that he has the right to complain; he keeps repeating himself how he should be glad that Leta‘s happy. 

On the few social or family occurrences where he sees them together, however, there’s always something bothering him. Once it’s the jacket too tight, another one it’s the hair refusing to stay in place, and during an especially stressful evening, the noise in the room feels so unbearable that he’d like to burrow in a dark corner like a Boggart.

He tries to bear it for the sake of his family, but since their last goodbye at Hogwarts, he finds it hard to look Leta in the eye. If he didn't know her, if he didn't know that Leta’s not afraid of anything, he would swear that it’s the same to her.

 

*

 

_ Newt crosses the Great Hall, dragging all his nests, his cages, his jars, piled up on the carriage along with the luggage.Expulsion does not make him much of an effect. His family will understand. _

_ He didn't tell anyone that the Jarvey who almost took Avery's fingers off was Leta’s. Leta needs a graduation more than he does. Newt doesn't care much about education, he just wants to travel and list all the species of beasts in the world. _

_ "Newt" an unmistakable voice makes him turn around, and he sees Leta crossing the Great Hall, her eyes more black and shinier than ever. _

_ He had no intention of leaving without saying goodbye, but at the same time he had never been an ace in farewells.  _

_ As she comes towards him, he wonders if he should give her one last gift and tell her something of those deep things that swirled in his mind when he spent afternoons with her.  _

_ He opens his mouth, ready to say he doesn't even know what, but she anticipates him. _

_ "Shut up," she whispers, throwing her arms around his neck.Newt doesn't know how to answer to the hug, he feels uncomfortable like an Augurey at a birthday party; therefore  _ _ he merely settles a couple of hesitant strokes on her back.  _

_ Newt has never been a Demiguise in predicting the behavior of his fellows, but never, even in a million years, he could have imagined... _

_ Leta kisses him. _

_ How weird, he thinks, she must be really upset, because her lips missed his cheek in full, and landed right on Newt's mouth instead. _

_ If it weren’t so clearly a mistake, this would be his first kiss. But he knows Leta well, and he knows she would never ever kiss him like this intentionally.  _

_ When they split up, Newt decides not to mention it to her. Poor Leta, she must already feel rather embarrassed.Instead, he gives her his crooked smile. She lowers her head, and if Newt didn't know her well, he'd say she doesn't want to look him in the eye. _

_ “Maybe you should invent a more practical way to transpor them," she says, turning her face to the cages so roughly that for a moment Newt doesn't even understand what she's talking about. Oh, right. The beasts. _

_ "Yes" he agreed, trying not to meet her gaze "maybe I should”. _

 

*

 

A few months later he charms a suitcase and fills it with all his beasts, rebuilding their habitats as best as he can.

He can take care of them better now, and he can move them without risking sanctions or unpleasant inconveniences.

It's just a suitcase, but when he travels, it becomes his home. While he’s serving on the Eastern Front, training dragons day and night, he receives letters from his family.

His brother became a war hero - "Order of Merlin, Second Class", writes his mother fiercely - and recently, Leta started working at the Ministry in the same office as him.

Leta.

He'd be lying if he said he doesn’t miss her, and he‘d be lying if he said he‘s angry with her.

In a certain way, he manages to understand her: he has his beasts at least. She has no one. To Leta, expulsion from Hogwarts would have meant the end.

Newt, on the other hand, gets along.

He can travel, research new species, and in Ukraine he also started collecting enough material to publish a book, one day.

He tries to convince himself that people change, that everyone must live with the lack of something. He personally doesn’t lack many things.

Last winter, one of his Occamys got a bad chill - Dragon Pox, perhaps, he never managed to figure it out - and as much as Newt tried to treat it, in the end he was gone. 

For some reason, that empty nest makes him think of Leta.

As much as he tries to ignore it, it seems to him that his life is full of missing pieces, of things he has never been able to fix, of people he‘d like to have next to him and he lost instead, of words he cannot say.

He seems to have made a myriad of mistakes, not out of badness or malice, but out of negligence, for being unable to be a perfectly functioning member of the human species.

In nature, those like him become extinct. And those like his brother - as he learned from a letter he has just opened but pretends not to have received - carry the species on.

The emptiness Leta left in him will never be small, but he tries to make it small. 

He simply tries to think of something else, to do something else, and to keep himself well away from the Ministry’s offices.

And yet, when he finds a picture of her in the pages of an old school book that he thought lost, he can't help but frame it and place it on the work table, where he can always see it.

This is a very poor consolation, but in five years he doesn’t remember seeing Leta smiling as much as in that picture; and if he stares at her very intensely, he can almost figure out she’s smiling at him, who explains to her the exact way to tame a Zouwu.

 

 

_ “I don’t really know what Leta likes these  _ _ days. _

_ Because people change. _

  _[...]_

  _I’ve changed. I think. Maybe a little.”_  

 

 

“You didn’t mean to do it, Leta. So it wasn’t your fault”.

“Oh, Newt. You never met a monster you couldn’t love”.

Leta's eyes, lit by the dim light of the crypt and veiled in tears, look like those of an Acromantula. Shining, hypnotics, obsidian black; for a moment Newt’s ready to believe that eight legs will grow off of her, and she will eat them all up. 

He thinks that Leta’s like an Acromantula. 

The others run away from her because she frightens them, because she’s ready to bite them at the slightest touch, at the slightest word. 

But if you take care of her, caress her, and feed her, and talk to her, and show her that to you she’s not a monster at all, that she can trust you, because you hatched her egg and you would do it a hundred more times, then she will recognize you in a crowd, even if you belong to a different species from her, she will wrap you in her canvas and protect you from everything, even from her fellows. 

Even from herself.

Some would say that Newt has a twisted way of expressing love, and that he’s attracted to the wrong things. Maybe. Newt cannot be ashamed if he does not feel disgusted in front of a tarantula; or a woman who confesses to have killed her brother by mistake.  
Newt knows Acromantulas, and he knows Leta, and even though they are both part of the monsters class, he can't find them less than fascinating.  
Many years have passed, and he and Leta are no longer so friends. Long gone were the days when Newt could comfort her with his rambling speeches about human nature.  
But even if Tina is with him now, for a moment he would like to get up, and wipe all the tears from those black and milky tarantula eyes.  
Or at least, if he had known it was the last time he could see them, he would have looked longer.  
 

*  
  
   
Much later, he hears the story of a man named Hagrid, who was expelled from Hogwarts for his Acromantula accomplished a series of attacks against Muggle-born students.

  
Newt doesn’t need to know details.  
Even without evidence, he knows that the others are wrong, that Hagrid has been wrongly accused. His Acromantula - Aragog, it‘s called - was nourished, cared, even loved. It had no reason to attack anyone, although no one expected a tarantula to do anything but attack.

  
When Newt hears about Hagrid, many years have already passed since Leta's death. He has seen many things, and he regrets even more, but he tries hard not to lose the thing that she most envied him: trust in humankind.

  
“Don't become like me, Newt. Not wanting to believe in anything is foolish, but not being able it’s even worse."

And so he hopes she will forgive him, if for a moment, just for a moment, he thinks that sometimes tarantulas are not the ones to be afraid of.

  
People are.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there :) This is my first fic, and English is not my first language, so I hope I haven’t made so much mistakes.   
> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
